Soldiers Sculpt Snow, Make Sapporo Dazzle

A Creative Challenge For An Eager Military

SAPPORO, Japan — For most of the year, Lt. Naoki Uchimura leads a 15-man platoon in charge of Japanese missile systems that are on the alert to shoot down enemy planes.

But during the past month, Uchimura has faced a creative challenge. The lieutenant, who has been on a fast track in Japan's defense forces since he graduated from military academy six years ago, was charged with creating Bugs Bunny--in the form of a snow sculpture the size of a four-story building.

"My special mission!" said Uchimura, a lanky 26-year-old with an easy chuckle. "I always work with machines. But this is snow, which is like working with a living thing. And it hardens quickly."

Every year, when snow blankets this island of Hokkaido in the north of Japan, the city of Sapporo transforms some of its smooth and spacious streets into outdoor museums of snow and ice. Snow sculptures line the city's main boulevard, ice crystal sculptures take up another enclave, and giant snow buildings and ice-glazed slides sprawl across a military camp that belongs to the 11th Division.

One year, the city had a snow model of the White House big enough to hold a small conference. Other years have brought copies of the Sphinx, Buckingham Palace and the Taj Mahal.

The driving force for this festival in the city that was home to the 1972 Winter Olympics is Japan's Self-Defense Forces. Drawing upon the labor of 1,700 people, soldiers began in December to plan the array of sculptures that dot the city for this one week, ending Feb. 11, when the weather is its coldest.

The military's closet artists emerge--the ones who can draw, the cartoonists, the sculptors. The mathematicians come out too. Someone has to calculate how much snow is needed to make the sculptures, how long it will take to transport that snow and how many truckloads are needed without having to borrow too many vehicles from the next division.

Sapporo is cold and blizzardy this time of year. Snowbanks sometimes reach a full story high. While that may be enough to shape a few small figurines on the edge of the festival, it is not nearly enough snow to make the life-size palaces, elephants, village homes, historical figures and theater stages that have become the signature of Sapporo's Yuki Matsuri, or Snow Festival.

So, with 250 five-ton trucks, soldiers made 7,600 trips this year, carting in about 38,000 tons of snow from the mountains.

Uchimura's main challenge was to capture the image of Bugs Bunny. After the statue had gone up, it rained and one of Bugs Bunny's feet fell off. Uchimura was seen standing alone in front of the giant sculpture with the collapsed foot, his head hanging low in shame.

Then, about 10 days before the festival was to open, Warner Brothers sent a representative to check the likeness and give the nod to call the image Bugs Bunny. The representative, however, said the sculpture did not really resemble Bugs Bunny, so Uchimura ordered his team to recarve the entire image.

"His regular work is destroying planes by shooting missiles," said Mitsuo Yamaguchi, an army captain who oversaw the construction of a snow sculpture about four years ago. "To do it right, you have to organize the work very well. Making snow sculptures is the same. You have to choose who should do what, who should do the actual sculpturing."

"And the final result was that the sculpture did not look like the real thing," Yamaguchi said. "It's just like the failure of a missile to hit its target. In that case, you have to order your subordinates to do it again."

So in the end, does the sculpture resemble Bugs Bunny?

"We have not gotten any approval yet," he said, in a subtle admission of defeat.